GETTING FREE
Sermon Four: Killing My Old Man
Wildwind Community Church
David K. Flowers
March 9, 2008
Today is the capstone of the series we have been doing for the past three weeks called Getting Free. We’ve been talking about getting to where we are done with sin. I haven’t yet told you how that happens, so let me begin today by simply giving you the answer. This is huge – we’ve been building up to this moment for three weeks and now we’re finally here. I think a drum roll would be appropriate. Rick, can you come up and give us a drum roll? Ready? Here it is: If you want to leave sin behind in your life for good, what you do is (drum roll) – commit your life to God. Yes! That’s it! I know, that’s nothing you expect to hear a pastor say in a church on a Sunday morning (or a Saturday evening for that matter), but that’s what you do. If you are going to leave sin behind in your life, you have to commit your life to God.
Now my guess is that at this point I have a room full of Christians (although I realize not all of you are) who are saying, “What? I did that a long time ago.” I have some news for you. Actually, you probably didn’t! On the day you accepted Christ as the forgiver of your sins, you simply couldn’t have known how deep the rabbit hole of sin went in your life. There’s no way to know that, just like there’s no way of understanding when we’re 22 years old what it means to say to someone, “I take you to be my wedded wife/husband for better/worse, richer/poorer, in sickness/health so long as we both shall live.” You can’t possibly understand what that means. Chances are good you haven’t been through a lot of worse or poorer or sickness yet. You haven’t realized how fragile a marriage can be even when circumstances are perfect and everything’s going great. Let’s face it – on your wedding day you stood up there with the absolute best of intentions and you made a commitment so huge that you couldn’t possibly understand it. Good thing too, because remember how nervous you already were on that day? I wonder how many fewer marriages there would be if the moment you got engaged you suddenly had this vivid vision of the two of you standing next to each other at 50 or so caskets over a lifetime – sitting together in the hospital waiting for that scary word from the doctor – sleeping 26 minutes a night times a baby every other year for a few years – the fighting – the words you both said that you can never take back – the financial stress – the moments with the kids you wish you could do over – the late-night sump pump failures and working all night to dig out – the days of simple boredom when you will be as far as you could possibly be from the enthusiasm of young love. C’mon, admit it. When you said I do, you did, but you did in ignorance! And it’s probably the only way you would have! You didn’t know, and couldn’t have known, how much sacrifice would be required – how much effort and energy it would take – or how meaningful and rewarding it would become precisely because of those things.
Marriage is a relationship that requires commitment, and the intensity and exclusivity of that commitment that leads to the intensity of the meaning in marriage. The day you get married you make a commitment so huge that you simply can’t get your arms around it, but you make that commitment proactively. In other words, you can’t really understand what you’re doing at the time, but if you don’t stand up there and make that commitment in front of hundreds of people, how will you know what to do when the poorer, sicker, worse times come? Because of that commitment you made years ago, those times come and you say to yourself, “Oh, here it is. I get it now, a little bit. I made that commitment so that I would know what to do – now I just have to decide whether or not I will do what I already said I would do.”
Then one day you wake up after you’ve been married for a while, and things are different. Maybe there’s a lot more stress and you don’t live at the level you had hoped you would. Maybe you and/or your spouse have changed physically. Maybe one or both of you are living with a chronic illness or other condition. And maybe you’re feeling a little disillusioned, a little disappointed with your spouse, now that the shimmering romance has worn off. And it’s a struggle. You never thought you’d get to this place (p.s. – No one ever thinks they will, and everyone does!) Is this the person you really want to be with? Did you make a mistake? Was your decision to stay with them forever premature? Maybe you talk to friends or family. Maybe you work through it with your spouse. Maybe you keep it to yourself, but somewhere, and somehow, you make a decision.
And this decision is critical. Think of the ways you can go. You can decide just to grind it out. “Well, I made a commitment and I guess I’d better follow through.” Bad way to go. Only more difficulty on the horizon. Or you decide, “I quit. I never should have done it in the first place.” So you get out of the relationship, extinguishing any possibility that something redemptive could have happened – not in the other person, but in you. Those are possibilities. But there’s a third possibility, a third way to make this decision. But this time the decision is not a decision you make in the glow of young love without understanding what’s required. No, you’ve been through some hard things. Maybe you’re even going through them now. You’ve hurt each other a few times and let each other down and seen each other for who you really are. And you make a decision to accept this person – to love him/her with all their faults and flaws and failures. You know you’re going to struggle (because you’ve already struggled!), but you make the decision that this is the person you want to struggle through life with. You know you’ll have to permanently adopt some new attitudes and behaviors, and you’re willing to do that. Last time you committed to this person, you had no idea how hard life could be. This time, you make that same commitment again because you DO know how hard life is and will be. You know what marriage will require of you – of how it will demand your life, change your life, and determine your life. Whether you work through this crisis in a few hours, a few days, or a few years, most people in marriages that survive have dealt with it. Once you make that commitment in knowledge, you suddenly find yourself free to love and serve your spouse in new ways. Sure you still have arguments, you still disagree – but you are no longer double-minded. You have made a full commitment of yourself to that person. You have stopped considering whether or not to reconsider. You’re done with that, and all that energy now goes into loving and serving the one you committed to. Sure, you had already committed your life to that person, perhaps many years ago. But you know now things you couldn’t have known then and you need to make this commitment again in light of what you know.
Now listen. Your life with God is a relationship that requires commitment and the intensity and exclusivity of that commitment leads to the intensity of the meaning in that relationship. On the day you committed your life to Jesus, you had no way of knowing what this was going to be like, of how much of yourself would be required – of how much needed to change in your heart – of how deep the root of sin really went. The other thing you didn’t get was how sufficient Christ would be for you – how infinite his love is – and how utterly worthless would be all your attempts to be a good, righteous person. You committed your life to Christ in the “glow of young love,” so to speak – without understanding all that this relationship would require of you. And of course without really knowing Jesus very well. You committed your life to him when you barely knew him – I mean, you felt confident enough to ask him to forgive your sins and be the leader of your life, but you didn’t really get the “leader of your life” thing. There’s no way you could have.
So you jumped into that relationship. Then you started coming to church and you started to sing songs and read scriptures and hear sermons about what it means to be fully devoted to Christ. You hear about how life is no longer about you. How you are a servant and servants have no rights, and the only right Jesus gives you is the right to follow him wherever he may lead you, even unto death. You’re trying hard to be good. You’re going to church and reading the Bible (or at least feeling guilty for NOT reading it, like a good Christian ought to feel!) and going to small group and giving money and time to your church and singing to the music and sometimes even really feeling deeply in your heart a desire to belong fully to God. Maybe the more you feel that feeling, the harder you work, the more you try. But it doesn’t take long before you are feeling tired. You’re working so hard, yet it seems like you’re stuck in the same old spots – you keep dealing with the same sins over and over again. You feel like you’re spinning your wheels. You start to feel disillusioned. Disappointed with God. This isn’t what you thought it would be. You don’t feel lighter than air like you did on that day when you first gave your heart to him. What you don’t understand is that, just like in marriage, real life has come along and demanded its pound of flesh. It leaves you feeling unenthused, broken, bored in your relationship with God. You wonder if you did the wrong thing and if you maybe should never have become a Christian at all. Was God the right choice for you? After all, when you made that commitment, you were so naïve. You wrestle and struggle. You send emails to me as your pastor, or you talk to Brent or your small group leader. Maybe you just keep it to yourself, but somewhere, and somehow, you make a decision. Just like with marriage, you can ditch it, claiming it was never real in the first place. You can say, “Well, I said I’d do this and I’ll do it, dangit, and expect to only get more miserable.
But there’s a third possibility, a third way to make this decision. It’s a different decision this time. Same thing, only different. This time the decision is not a decision you make in the glow of a young relationship with God without understanding what’s required. No, you’ve been through some hard things. You’ve come to know things about God you didn’t know before. He’s not the God you thought he was and you have to deal with that. But you’ve come to understand one of the most essential things about him, which is how much he hates sin. You know that if you’re going to stay in this relationship, and if it’s going to ever work out, you have to declare your complete commitment to him, and swear off the sin in your life for good. There are actions, attitudes, and habits in your life that have negatively affected this relationship and they have to go. You decide to let them go, but not with any resentment or fear. You let them go because more than anything you desire for this relationship to be all it can be and you are willing to give up everything, pay absolutely any price. You’ve learned just enough about God to know you don’t want to let him go. And you know the only way to hang onto him is by completely letting go of yourself – dying to that person you used to be – allowing God to kill off that “carnal,” “fleshly” or “natural” person so that the Spirit life of God can begin to completely infiltrate you mind, body, and soul. When you do, you are free to serve him and love him like you never could have before.
My friends, that’s what I mean when I say that in order to experience freedom from sin, you must commit your life to God. That’s the kind of commitment I am talking about. The kind that happens when you have wrestled with it, thought about it, struggled with it, avoided it and then faced it a hundred times, and finally just fallen on your face before God and committed all you are and all you have ever been and all you will ever be. When you do that, you have just presented yourself to God as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to him.
Romans 12:1 (NIV)
1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship.
Do you see what I’m saying? When you do this you, for the first time, become a person who has declared that there is absolutely nothing you are not willing to do if God asks you. You have given up everything. You don’t desire anything more than what God desires for you. You have put to death every trace of your former self and live now for one purpose and that is that God would come to life fully in you.
Let’s take a look at a church full of people in the Bible who were struggling, just like many of us do, and let’s see what Paul, their former pastor, told them:
Galatians 2:19-20 (MSG)
19 What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a "law man" so that I could be God’s man.
20 Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Do you identify with what Paul’s saying here? Have you tried keeping rules and working your head off? Has it left you exhausted? Do you want to serve God and live the life you hear me preaching about every week but frequently find it too hard?
Look at verse 20.
20 Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it…
Paul starts by telling us this is something that comes from God. Unlike all the other efforts we have made in the spiritual life, this is not something we do, but something we receive. It’s like the gift of salvation itself – freely given to us by God and received through an exercise of our faith. This next part is huge:
20…I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central.
If you want to be released from slavery to sin, this is the way it will happen. It will happen when you identify yourself completely with him. This identification is so complete that it will completely obliterate the way you think of yourself right now. The best comparison Paul could think of was crucifixion. This is Paul’s way of saying, “I have killed my old man.” And it’s the most intense way of saying those four words Rick Warren loves to say – “It’s not about me.” It’s not about my ego, my efforts, my performance, my devotion, my sufficiency, my intensity, my intellect, my gifts, or anything else – none of that can make it happen. And it’s not about my flaws, my failures, my fears, my weaknesses, my insecurities, my insufficiencies, my vulnerabilities, my sins, my lack of discipline, my neediness, or anything else – none of that can KEEP it from happening. The only thing that can keep it from happening is the word “MY” that proceeds every quality, good and bad, that I just shared with you. I realized a few months ago that I had been butting up against a spiritual wall most of my life. It was a big, huge, stinking, insurmountable wall of ME. That was my problem. That was what had to go. I needed the old heave-ho. The old me had to die. I had spent my life taming it, disciplining it, organizing it, satisfying it, pleasing it, stuffing the Bible into it, educating it, managing it, promoting it, defending it, justifying it, and making sure it felt good and looked good. And the harder I tried, the more it demanded of me. On the 16th of January I prayed a long prayer, and part of it was, “God, before I finish this prayer and open my eyes, kill me. Kill the person I was.” And he did.
God killed that person I was, and set me free from myself. Now when God takes you off your list of concerns, what else is there?
At that point you can say with Paul,
20…It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God.
Following Christ becomes easier because, when you have died, what’s left after that? What have you to fear? What do you need to worry about? What will you not be willing to do, or where will you not go? Once you climb onto that altar and submit yourself as a living sacrifice to God, you are now not just under new management, you are under new ownership!
20…Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Your life ceases to be your own and you no longer have any vested interest in it. None. Not in trying to look out for it, manage it, worry about it, or secure what’s coming to it. You’ve squarely faced your own inadequacy and limitations, and you’ve killed your old man/old woman, and now the deepest desire of your heart is to know God, to be close to him, and to be like him in every way possible.
Do want to be done with sin? Do you want your life to change? Do you want to find freedom like you have never known? It lies along the path of self-denial, like Jesus always said – in dying to all those interests that constantly cloud your mind. Jesus said,
Matthew 10:39 (NRSV)
39 Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
What’s Jesus saying here?
Matthew 10:39 (MSG)
39 If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me.
I want to call you today to lose your life. That is exactly the call Jesus gave, why should mine be any different as a bearer of his message?
Is it time for you? Are you finding yourself increasingly aware of the futility of serving God in your own strength? Over the past few weeks, have you experienced deep regret and shame over having so totally missed the point, and thinking you could serve Christ wholeheartedly with sin in your life? Have you had this sense of the Holy Spirit’s gentle love and guidance, rather than self-hatred and self-recrimination? Because if it’s God, no matter how hard this might be to face, you will experience his gentle love. If you’re beating yourself up again, that’s just more of what you’ve always done.
Have you come to understand the insufficiency of everything you could ever be or do for God? Are you ready to repent of the sin you have kept in your life, and get up on that altar and present yourself as a living sacrifice to God? Are you ready to do it – to commit your life fully to him?
